


O Rose thou art sick

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/F, Mindfuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-02 14:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20277445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: This dream is different, but it starts like many of the other ones.





	O Rose thou art sick

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Morbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/gifts).

This dream is different, but it starts like many of the other ones. Briar Rose wakes up with Maleficent’s lips on hers, hard and cold. But the kiss is softer than usual, more a gesture than anything else.

She leans into the kiss, cupping Maleficent’s chin and opening up her mouth, but Maleficent pulls away. She looks down at Briar Rose in satisfaction.

Briar Rose sometimes can tell what Maleficent is feeling, sometimes not. Sometimes in her dreams Maleficent is barely more than an outline, a dark figure in the background, a bad omen. Other times she is as close to Aurora as a friend; other times it is like Briar Rose herself is Maleficent, she sees Maleficent going about her life, doing things, explores old memories… the dreams are not chronological and they are often confused. And she cannot remember where they began—when she tries, she glimpses thoughts of a prince, the panic of leaving home, a castle…

A castle much like this one. She looks around and sees that she is in a bed, a canopy bed with blue curtains. The room is otherwise made of stone, and there are cobwebs on the walls, dust collected in the curtains. She blinks and sneezes. (Funny, she doesn’t usually sneeze in dreams.)

Her dream has come full circle; she feels certain this is how it began, with her in this room and Maleficent beside her. But, as often is the case, the dream has changed now, absorbed what came before it. Maleficent holds takes her hand and pulls her out of the bed.

“Come, princess, let us go. I have a better castle than this wreck, and it awaits us.”

She is often called princess in her dreams, sometimes called Aurora as well. She accepts this. She takes Maleficent’s hand, and they ghost down the stairway, through halls full of sleeping people, out onto a dark cliff. She shudders to see hundreds of thorny vines climbing the castle walls. Yes, the dream has changed since it first started.

But Maleficent steps back, and turns into a dragon—sometimes she is a dragon, which doesn’t seem to bother her very much, though she is very large and terrifying—and gestures for Briar Rose to get on her back. So Briar Rose climbs on and clasps her neck, and away they fly.

The flying of the dragon rocks her back into darkness. It feels like falling asleep—more than it usually does—but it can’t be, she’s quite sure she was asleep already.

When she comes back to the dream (she dreams of waking again, though not with a kiss this time), the plotline is still much the same; they are still going to the castle, and after a while they actually arrive there. This is rather shocking; Maleficent has mentioned her castle in other dreams before, but they never actually get there. This is something new, and Briar Rose is rather excited at the progression.

Of course, the thread of the dream still twists out of her control. Maleficent said her castle was “better”. It is not.

Which is to say, it is certainly less on the brink of falling apart, and it is less dusty, but it has just as many defects. The darkness. The odor, which reminds Briar Rose of the time Fauna mixed together a seemingly harmless bunch of herbs and then Flora and Merryweather panicked, threw it out the window, and asked Fauna whether she was trying to kill them. The vast number of scuttling creatures, which hurry into the shadows every time Briar Rose catches sight of them. It’s all very menacing, but Maleficent looks at Briar Rose expectantly, so Briar Rose politely asks her, “Is this where you live?”

“Yes,” Maleficent says. “It suits me, doesn’t it?” She runs a long-fingered hand through Briar Rose’s hair. When Briar Rose doesn’t answer, she sharply repeats, “Doesn’t it, my dear?”

“Yes,” Briar Rose says reluctantly, “I suppose it does, only…” Only it could be brighter, couldn’t it? Maleficent, of course, always wears dark clothes, and as a dragon her scales are indigo, but still, she can’t possibly enjoy this kind of atmosphere.

“Don’t worry,” Maleficent says, “now that you’ll be living with me, I’ll make sure you have a nice room. I’ll give it some color. And you’ll need a new dress.”

Briar Rose abruptly realizes her current dress is very worn and dirty. She flushes, and Maleficent laughs and kisses her on the cheek. “I will make sure your life will be just like your nicer dreams, my dear.”

“Well, this dream is nice enough,” Briar Rose says courageously, though it is not even close.

(She has dreamed of walking with Maleficent through valleys of flowers and birds, of swimming in streams while Maleficent watches from the bank, of dances in elegant, towering ballrooms. But then, even those dreams are never perfect. Under Maleficent’s feet, flowers turn black; the water in the streams is always too cold, and in the ballrooms, everyone but Maleficent is as insubstantial as a shadow. Maleficent alone guides her through these dreams, and though she is frightening, she is at least solid, constant, almost real.)

“This dream, love?” Maleficent asks.

“Very nice,” Briar Rose lies.

Maleficent kisses her on the lips, slow and quiet. Then she lifts her chin and looks her in the eyes. “This is not a dream, my dear princess. I have woken you up—this is the real world.”

But a palace like this could never be real, nor creatures like the ones who skitter and titter in the periphery of Briar Rose’s vision. And Maleficent is here, Maleficent the dream woman. But it is rude to tell someone they are not real, so Briar Rose only nods and asks if Maleficent will show her around the castle a little more.

The rest of the castle is all equally frightening, but she supposes this dream is not likely to last long, so it doesn’t matter very much, does it?

* * *

“She still doesn’t believe me,” Maleficent hisses.

In anger, she bangs the side of the cage, sending it swinging. The three fairies inside—Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, quaintly small—cling to the bars to avoid being knocked silly. They’ve gotten good at dealing with Maleficent’s temper in the fifty years since she first captured them; them and Prince Philip, though Philip has mostly become distant and depressed, has only a half grip on reality, while Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, being immortal and therefore more resilient, have remained brilliantly defiant the whole time.

“It’s no surprise she doesn’t believe she’s woken up,” Merryweather says self-righteously, “when you’ve kept her asleep for fifty years, dreaming the whole time, blurring her sense of what’s real and what’s not. It’s especially no surprise she wouldn’t trust you—we raised her better than that!”

“Don’t try my temper, little fairy,” Maleficent says. “Maybe I’ll make your cage ice cold for a year. Would you like that?”

She’s done worse to them in the time they’ve been here. But the gall of them drives her mad every time. They raised Briar Rose; so what? She’s known Briar Rose longer than they have by thirty-four years, and yet they still insist on scolding her whenever Briar Rose comes up, still think they know what’s best for her. She was even moved enough by their scolding and Briar Rose’s sleeping melancholy to wake the girl up. (It had been a test, too, of her own feelings—she had wondered if it was possible that she really could love the girl, when it had been so long since she last felt love. As it turned out, yes, she could.) But Briar Rose is still melancholy even after waking, and more melancholy in Maleficent’s palace, even though it’s been two weeks and Maleficent has brought her present after present after present.

Even though Maleficent has taken time away from her other projects, much more important projects, to be with her, she remains only half-there. Maybe she was always like that. Maleficent only met her briefly before she fell asleep, and then she was in a trance. But it doesn’t seem quite right, though why Maleficent should care is another whole question to which she has no answer.

Fauna speaks up cautiously. “If you want Aurora to know she’s truly woken up, why don’t you bring us to see her? We could tell her the truth. She’s always trusted us.”

“We’ve been like mothers to her,” Flora said. “She’ll know we’re real.”

Maleficent casts a curse on the cage to make it hot, rather than cold. It’s the turn her mood has taken. Then she leaves.

It’s worse because they’re more right than they know. She never told them about all the times she visited Briar Rose’s dreams to see the three fairies there in residence; Briar Rose would be laughing and happy, fully taken in by the illusion, until she saw Maleficent standing in the window. To her Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather are real, and Maleficent is not. But for that reason, it would do no good for her to see the three fairies. If Maleficent were standing at their side, she would still never believe in them.

And the three fairies will also try to persuade Briar Rose to escape, to leave Maleficent. That is something Maleficent cannot allow.

She takes a while to compose herself before going to see Briar Rose. Goes to another corner of the dungeons and works on a dangerous potion for a while, one that will soon be sent to a friend in a foreign kingdom. It’s funny how Briar Rose objects to the smell of the palace; this brew is quite lethal, but it smells like mint and tastes like sunshine. The drinker will have pleasure of it, for a while.

When she has calmed herself, she washes her hands thoroughly, wipes them off on a silken towel (expensive fabric—she has the means to afford such things) and goes to Briar Rose’s room, which has now been draped with tapestries, carpeted in velvet, and adorned here and there with vases of flowers. Briar Rose is lying in the bed, expression lackluster. At least when she sees Maleficent, she smiles.

“Maleficent, it is so peculiar. I feel tired.”

“Of course you are,” Maleficent says, “it is evening now. I hope my servants remembered to take you dinner.”

“Oh, yes. Dinner. Yes, there was dinner. Do you know, this castle is so unpleasant, but the food here has more flavor than anything I can remember.”

“Is it really so unpleasant?”

Caught in discourtesy, Briar Rose blushes. She is lovely. “No, no. It is… very nice.” Abruptly, she stands and begins to unbutton the back of her dress. She can’t reach all of the buttons, so Maleficent goes to help her. The skin underneath is pale, unmarked except for one or two spots which come not from the sun but are merely birthmarks.

“You are beautiful, princess,” Maleficent says.

“Mm.” Briar Rose slips out of the dress and leaves it pooled on the floor. She does the same with her undergarments, casting them carelessly aside. The act of a noblewoman accustomed to others cleaning up after her—only Briar Rose was raised a peasant, so it can only be the habit of someone not used to her acts retaining consequences before the shifting of a dream carries them away.

In the nude, she pulls Maleficent into the bed with her. Unconcerned with propriety, and unthinking of the possibility of Maleficent undressing as well. (In dreams, Maleficent never did, so why should she now?) She kisses Maleficent, touches Maleficent, and in turn lets Maleficent touch her as she wishes.

The first couple times Maleficent ever tried to kiss Briar Rose in a dream, she fought her off and ran away, and Maleficent was forced to concede, as Briar Rose had some level of power over her own dream realm. But slowly, Briar Rose has been wooed. First, she stopped caring about Maleficent’s advances, allowed them disinterestedly. Eventually she grew to enjoy them, and now sometimes she will do things like this, make advances herself.

It is amazing, really, for no one has ever been so bold with Maleficent in years, not even her few chosen consorts. But it is clear she still does not think any of it is real. And as long as she does not think Maleficent is more than a figment of her imagination, there can only be fondness from her, fondness and lust, no real connection. She sees Maleficent as a shade, an idea, and one cannot love a shade or an idea. Not truly.

Were she to kiss Maleficent, and were Maleficent cursed, it would not cause Maleficent to wake.

But Maleficent loves her. She kisses her and touches her and kisses her and touches her until they are both exhausted, and collapse side by side. Briar Rose says sleepily, “Next time, we should do it in a field. Remember? The field full of roses with no thorns.”

A field she conjured up in Briar Rose’s dreams some time ago. No such thing exists in reality, not yet. But perhaps Maleficent can create a field like that for Briar Rose, if she really wants one. The enchantment would take time, but it would not be impossible.

“If you want,” she says, and she folds Briar Rose up into her arms, covering pale skin with indigo fabric. 


End file.
